Free Grey Area by Will Self Page B

the will is a wish to avoid full moral responsibility – ‘
    ‘For Christ’s sake, Henry, give it a bloody rest.’
    And so they went on. To begin with Giselle had listened to the argument with close attention. Her eyes flicked over the net of Burgundy bottles, from player to player, as they volleyed rubberised sophistries back and forth, struggling to win the bon point. Eventually she grew weary.
    The paradox that it was Beckwood, the polymer scientist working with the testable proofs of science, who clung on to the moral essence of free will, wasn’t lost on her. And although she was disappointed by Peter’s unwillingness to include her in the debate – apart from an occasional ‘Giselle will back this up, she’s a philosopher too, y’know’ – she couldn’t help being thrilled once more, as she had been in his seminars, by the audacity of his pronouncements, the sure rigidity of his mental projections.
    Peter kept on creating truth tables to illustrate his more technical points. At the dinner table these were constructed from rolled-up pellets of bread, lain out on the mahogany surface like edible Go counters. From time to time, Caitlin and June broke off from their intimate conversation to say things like, ‘Really, Peter, playing with your food like an infant, is this what you do at High Table . . .’
    Giselle was amazed by how dismissive the women were of their menfolk. They either ignored them, or joshed them unmercifully. Their remarks betrayed such condescension, such refusal to admit any equality with Peter and Henry, that she was surprised that the men didn’t retaliate in any way. But perhaps they were simply too drunk.
    ‘That’s what Jowett used to say.’ They were in the drawing room and Henry and Peter were drinking Rémy Martin out of mismatched tumblers. ‘Are you a two-bottle man, or a three-bottle man!’ They guffawed at this.
    ‘Joyce doesn’t realise what she’s putting up with,’ Caitlin was saying to June. ‘If she did, she wouldn’t allow them to bully her in this fashion.’ It had transpired that Caitlin was a landscape gardener as well – and a successful one. Giselle could work this out from the famous names that were inadvertently kicked between them as they discussed ideas, billings, possible commissions, the impossibility of getting good workers.
    Giselle had had more wine that she should. She was almost drunk. When she turned her head, from the bookcase to the men’s mulberry faces, from these faces to those of the animated women, her eyes followed on lazily, lurching against the insides of their sockets as if intoxicated in their own right.
    The voices burred and lowed. Giselle tried to imagine her hosts as cattle. They fitted the role well, set down on the field of carpet by the pools of wavering light, grazing on conversation.
    ‘You look ready to drop, Giselle.’ It was June, her voice maternal, gently concerned.
    ‘I’m, I’m sorry . . .?’
    ‘You’d better go up to bed, my dear, you’ll need a good night if you’re going to cope with Peter and his hangover in the morning.’
    ‘Oh, yeah, urn, s’pose so.’ Giselle struggled to her feet, the distance from the bottom of the low armchair to being upright was an Everest ascent.
    She said her good-nights. Peter and Henry barely interrupted their conversation, they just waved their glasses at her and made valedictory noises. The women were more polite.
    ‘I do hope you’ll be all right in the Rood Room,’ said June. ‘It can be a bit draughty.’
    ‘Oh I’m sure I will; please don’t worry.’
    As she tunnelled her way up through the house Giselle felt nothing but relief – relief to have escaped the adults. Even though she was going to bed, she might have been on her way to join the twins, who she could hear chattering and playing records in some mid-distanced room. But what Giselle really wanted was sleep. Sleep and dreams.
    In the Rood Room she felt her way gingerly around the shoulder-high